


N7 Month: Prompt/Sniper

by JoAsakura



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 01:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21384145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: You never see the shot to the heart coming. N7 Month 2019
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Male Shepard
Comments: 7
Kudos: 48





	N7 Month: Prompt/Sniper

The first time Kaidan Alenko meets Lt. Commander Ivan Ivanovich “John Doe” Shepard he is beset by a litany of confusion.

1) The Manifest says John Doe Shepard, N7 Biotic vanguard. And Kaidan *knows* who this is. Every biotic in the Alliance knows who John Doe Shepard is. The man who singlehandedly held the line at Elysium’s Paradise City front, the lunatic vanguard who went so far off book and off field command guidelines for biotics to save thousands of people that there was an actual schism in Vancouver where the two sides were “court marshal” or “send him to ITC stat”. Kaidan asks Captain Anderson four times if this is not a joke, and two active biotics are going to be serving together on this cutting edge stealth frigate. Anderson just pats him on the shoulder.

2) When Anderson introduces the stocky, scruffy redhead as “Lieutenant Commander Ivan Ivanovich Shepard, a little piece of Kaidan Alenko dies inside. The man is clearly not a superheroic vanguard legend. He’s thick, but it’s all functional muscle, with features that are too broad and uneven on their own, but combine to make him oddly attractive. He makes a wincing smile when Anderson introduces him and there’s a gap in his teeth and a scar on his lips. There’s an N7 badge on his field gear, that much seems to be true, and when he salutes back, Kaidan can see the man’s an inveterate nail biter.

3) “I knew I got excited for nothing,” Kaidan mutters to Jenkins in the Normandy’s equipment bay, but he watches Shepard unload his gear anyways. The Black Widow, folded into it’s travel state, catches him off guard. It’s the heaviest sniper rifle in existence, able to punch through at least six inches of Batarian armour and generally designed for much stronger Turians or Asari to use. As a Sentinel, Kaidan’s been trained with a sniper rifle, and he’s met some adepts who use them, but he’s never once, ever, heard of a vanguard using one. He knows their reputation as crazy, head butting, sexed up war machines is exaggerated, but there’s a little bit of truth to it and he can’t stand it anymore.

“Hey, Commander,” Kaidan says as casually as he can for someone who’s thinks they’re about to unmask some enormous conspiracy. “I’m sorry, manifest says John Doe, you need me to fix that.

“Lieutenant Alenko,” the little redhead says with just the tiniest ghost of an accent, and he gives Kaidan a gap-toothed smile. “Nah. ‘Ivan Ivanovich’ it’s basically John Doe in Russian. There’s a long an’ stupid story surrounding all of it, and Cap’s always liked to give me shit about it. Ivan Ivanovich John Doe Shepard is what my official documentation says but that’s just fuckin’ ridiculous, so my friends? They call me Vanya.” he laughs ruefully, then swerves. “I’m really excited to be working with another biotic finally. We’re like fucking unicorns and I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Yeah, about that,” Kaidan rocks on his feet, trying not to blush. “So. You’re a vanguard?”

“Headbutting loony at your service,” Shepard replies with a sheepish smile.

“I’ve just.. is that a Black Widow?”

“Oh, yeah. A buddy of mine from ITC gave her to me at graduation,” he turns it over in his hands. “She’s my insurance policy.”

“I don’t follow.”

Shepard leans against his locker, pale grey-green-blue eyes like some lost methane giant far too old for his homely-handsome face. “Sometimes, you can’t just go Charging in, good as that feels to grab that lock on an enemy’s biometrics. Sometimes, you gotta sit back and assess. Sometimes, you gotta hit ‘em before they see you coming.” that gap-toothed grin returns with a feral edge.

4) Eden Prime is a shitshow in every possible sense of the word. Every single thing that can go wrong does, they have a dead SPECTRE, dead crewmen, dead colonists and things, things that will give Kaidan nightmares for weeks, attacking them.

But in the middle of it, he sees Shepard swap out the carnifex on his hip for that goddamn big gun, and just breathe. He pulls the trigger and the servos in his hardsuit whine loud enough for Kaidan to actually hear as they take the brunt of the monstrous gun’s recoil. And in the next second, Shepard is just… gone. The rank of ozone and the sudden thunderclap of displaced air in a flare of eye-breaking blue three hundred yards downwind. Through his own gun’s scope he watches Shepard dance, flicking in and out of Charge, the rapid thunder of his biotics in harmony with the steady crack-crack-crack of the carnifex.

It is not what he expects to see from the stocky, gap-toothed Russian with the stupidly large gun, but exactly what he would have expected from the man who held the line at Elysium, and Kaidan feels a burn of embarrassment safely under his helmet.

Shepard’s in his ear the next moment “Clear, transmitting path coordinates to you and Williams. There’s something down here you guys have gotta see.”

5) Shepard is lying in sickbay, tormented even in unconsciousness as whatever that Prothean garbage heap did to him digs through his brain and there’s not a thing Kaidan can do to stop it. 

He’s barely known Shepard any time at all, but the Commander had taken the hit from the Beacon for him without any hesitation, and Kaidan sits by his bed, feeling sick to his stomach. 

“Kaidan, you should go rest,” Doc Chakwas says gently. “I’ll inform the Captain when Commander Shepard wakes up.”

“сука блять,” moaned hoarse from the bed beside him, and Kaidan has no idea what it means but it’s suddenly the sweetest sound he’s ever heard. Shepard blinks bleary at him with those old-ice eyes and smiles like in turn, Kaidan’s the best thing he’s ever seen. “Hey Lieutenant, you ok?”

Sometimes, you never see the shot coming. But Kaidan knows the minute that smile hits his heart, that he’s done for.


End file.
